


Under the Roses

by iloveyoudie



Series: Morseverse Prompt Fills [10]
Category: Endeavour (TV), Inspector Morse (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Regret, Tumblr Prompt, Unconfessed Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 03:56:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17338139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iloveyoudie/pseuds/iloveyoudie
Summary: “You never talk about him,” Lewis said to Morse one evening, “Your old Governor. Thursday.”





	Under the Roses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jameshathaway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jameshathaway/gifts).



> A prompt fill for tumblr - Morse/Lewis or Morse/Thursday  
> The way you said "I Love You" - When I am Dead (or) As a Goodbye

"You never talk about him," Lewis said to Morse one evening, "Your old Governor. Thursday."

And Morse sighed.

They'd closed a case, a rough one, dead child, and Robbie didn't have anyone to go home to. Val was off at an auntie's and the kids had coordinated to both have sleepovers at friends. He'd been looking forward to the evening alone for weeks until this case dropped on them and turned everything upside down. Now he dreaded sitting in his empty house and worrying about his kids or his wife or everyone's kids and everyone's wives because it was one of those day's that he'd felt real evil in the world and realized no one was every truly safe.

So he went back to Morse's.

They'd tried to celebrate and forget by sharing amusing or extraordinary case stories as they worked their way through a bottle. Lewis barely believed Morse's recollection of a murderous tiger in a hedge maze. The most believable bit was that they'd yanked poor Dr. Debryn straight off a bus with his fishing kit still in hand when his replacement didn't measure up to CID standards. But a tiger? Morse wasn't usually one for fanciful exaggeration but every man had to master at least one anecdote, didn't he?

Robbie ended up being grilled by Morse about his Vice days and while they weren't the most uplifting tales, there were occasional humorous discoveries. One of Robbie's sergeants at the time had been one of the clumsiest men living, as well as being a bit of a duffer, so recollections of his pratfalls and missteps got them three quarters of the way through the bottle of Glenfiddich.

When it got quiet, Morse put on a record and they both stared at the ceiling from opposite ends of his hideous sofa and sipped their whiskey in silence. When the first side of the LP ended Morse spoke again.

"The first time I saw a child-" Morse sounded distant so Lewis rolled his head to watch him, "-my first case with a dead child," Morse clarified with a small clearing of his throat, "I was still a DC. It was still Oxford City Police then, out of Cowley Road."

Robbie sipped his whiskey and listened with rapt attention. Morse rarely talked about anything before he was a sergeant under McNutt.

"A girl had gone missing from a school trip to a museum. That same day, at the same museum, a professor was murdered - at first appearance, with an Indian katar."

"Sounds right up your alley, sir," Lewis smiled.

"Oh, it was, Lewis. It was. Ghost stories and hundred year old murders. Heraldry and genealogy… Real research," Morse almost smiled.

"But you hate doing paperwork."

"Ah, but it was a puzzle, Lewis," Morse growled with reminiscent excitement, "And I love puzzles."

"Did you find the girl?" Lewis asked.

"Yes but it cost us another," Morse's energy dropped again, face drooping, "We'd been watching the house, patrolling, and it happened under our noses. The killer got in, County failed, and a young girl was caught in the middle. All over inheritance. Money," He grimly shook his head, "No one was alright. Not Inspector Thursday or our Chief Super, Mr. Bright. Not even old Max, who was not-so-old at the time."

And that's when Lewis asked about Thursday. Why? Why did he never talk about his old Inspector?

Morse stared back at the ceiling and sunk lower into the distastefully patterned fabric until he was nearly laying flat with his legs cast out and crossed at the ankle. He took a sip of his drink, rolled it in his mouth and swallowed.

"Because I loved him, Lewis."

Robbie prickled with uneasy anticipation. It was not what he'd expected to hear but by the tone of his governor's whiskey-thick voice, he was telling the truth. Morse was a romantic but not explicitly a liar or sensationalist. He fluctuated between strict privacy and overt, unfiltered expression. For him to admit something like that aloud was a sign he meant it. It wasn't a stretch to imagine the young and eager policeman and his experienced and admirable governor. There was a bond there, something important for the relationship to maintain, and it was more than getting along. It was like a marriage. Was he in so much of a different situation, himself?

With the whiskey, it felt easy to tell himself how admirable Morse was. It was easy to ignore his unpleasantness and bias and think about how clever he could be in his unorthodox ways. His bullheaded confidence maintained even when he was wrong and that confidence could be intoxicating. When Morse got on a roll, when Morse took a cocky witness down several pegs, when Morse put some puzzle together from a stray misshapen clue, Robbie was flattered and proud to be the man by his elbow.

With the whiskey he felt that Inspector Morse's level was something he could strive for.

Did Robbie love Morse?

With this much whiskey in him and Morse right there looking more human than he ever had, perhaps he could admit he did love him in his own way. What a cruel truth. In the sober light of day the affection may disappear, when Morse snapped at him like an old hound, he'd likely resent him, but somewhere deep and important he knew it was the truth. Love came in different forms, but it didn't mean it wasn't real.

"What happened to him?" Robbie asked and Morse looked puzzled, as if he'd expected a different question.

"Well… he died," Morse swallowed the end of his glass and hauled himself up to pour another. "The man survived a war, policing in London in the 50's, being shot in the lung- He coughed it up, Lewis. The man coughed up a bullet and kept it as a souvenir."

Lewis thought he sounded like quite the man.

"He even survived me, the human disaster," Morse poured himself another measure, "but he couldn't survive himself. Cancer. By the time they found it, it was too late. Pipe in his mouth until the day he died."

"I'm sorry, sir."

"Nothing to be sorry about. You didn't kill him," Morse sunk back into his side of the couch and once more cast his head back to look at the ceiling.

"It's just what people say isn't it? 'I'm sorry for your loss' or 'They are in a better place'."

"Yes, it's just what they say," Morse sighed, "I've never liked platitudes, Lewis. Do you even think about what you're saying? No one wants you to gussy up your pity for them. Thinly veiling with language that you feel _bad_ for them."

Robbie hadn't thought of that, though now he was. Lewis let the alcohol run him through the standard expressions of sympathy and he realized how shallow and unfeeling it sounded from Morse's angle.

"Fred Thursday was a different breed of man, Lewis. You would have liked him," Morse turned and pinned him with those intensely blue eyes of his, "You could be as good as him, Lewis. More than I ever could."

Robbie felt himself heat from the compliment and tried not to smile, so he cocked his head with a shrug because he didn't know what to say. He couldn't hold Morse's intense gaze so he resumed staring at the ceiling. It felt like a high compliment, the highest, to be like a man that Morse _loved._

"Did you ever tell him, sir? That you-"

"No," Morse cut him off, "I never had the chance."

\-----

_Morse didn't go see the grave until the grass had filled in and covered over the fresh earth and it didn't feel like it had been only yesterday that Thursday had been alive, lamenting his retirement and itching to pick up a few hobbies. He'd called Morse only a week before he'd found out about his illness to let him know that he and Win's ballroom finals would be on the telly and he should give it a watch._

_He hadn't. He should've._

_By the time Morse came to see the grave the headstone had been long set and lost its fresh carved look, and the blanketing turf was no longer fresh pale sprouts and the resting place blended in with all the others. A wilting collection of flowers was set delicately into the holder at the base of the stone and Morse tried to surmise if it was Win or Joan or Sam who had come to make sure their patriarch was remembered. Morse hadn't spoken to them since the funeral, hadn't checked in at all. The Thursdays meant the world to him but their house was not a home without Fred._

_He wasn't ready to speak to them. He wasn't even ready to be here, but he was._

_Morse's eyes burned behind his lids. He'd determined that he shouldn't cry, that Thursday wouldn't want him to, but against his will tears pricked at the corners and slid unbidden down his cheeks._

_"Sir-" He touched the marble and dropped to a crouch, folding in with pain as a spike of sorrow hit him squarely in the chest. He thought talking would help, people liked to tell you that talking **always** helped, but Morse found himself without the words._

_Thursday would have chuckled, he was sure, to have stricken him dumb. Or maybe he'd instead be moved and adopt a stiff upper lip, and like all men of that generation did they'd shake each others hands very seriously and keep their feelings to themselves. Blue eyes would meet dark ones and all that was unsaid would be there in their mutual gaze._

_Handshakes were for goodbyes._

_Thursday would hate that he'd left a note. A note he couldn't read. A note that needed translation. But Thursday also knew Morse and knew the man did nothing in an ordinary way. Morse didn't communicate like other people but Thursday had always known his mind when it mattered. He stuck the folded note between the stems of the flowers and the fluttering paper blocked out the engraved end-date of Frederick Albert Thursday, beloved husband and father's time on this mortal coil. It was like a trick: if you looked from the right angle it was like there was no death date at all._

_Morse wouldn't come to the grave again. Not in a month. Not in a year. Not when he was old and grey. His last words to his governor were left in a flourish of ink and stuffed between the stems of a pair of withering white roses. His last words to his governor didn't come until the man was long gone. His last words to his governor would be ones he'd never hear or even see._

**_Sub rosae amo te_ **

**_-M_ **

**Author's Note:**

> The translation is 'I love you under the roses', the phrase meaning I love you in silence/secret.


End file.
